Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight Review by Dana Schmidt, Yankton Community Library Where They Found Her is McCreight’s second novel. Her fi rst book, Reconstructing Amelia, was released in 2013 and was nominated for many awards. She writes very fast-paced and captivating psychological suspense mysteries similar to the style of Gone Girl. In both of McCreight’s novels, the stories begin with a body being discovered and the process of working backwards to uncover many of the secrets and lies that led to that tragic end.

Her books keep you guessing and trying to solve the mysteries throughout the whole story, often with unexpected results.

In Where They Found Her, the body of an unknown newborn is found near a creek in the picturesque town of Ridgedale. The story is told in the alternating voices of three women from the town whose lives all become unexpectedly intertwined through this tragedy. Molly, a newspaper reporter who has recently suff ered a miscarriage and a dark depression, is reluctantly assigned when there is no one else to cover the story. Soon, however, she feels that this story is what she needs to help her regain the person that she used to be and she becomes extremely dedicated to fi nding out the truth about what happened to this poor child. Sandy is a high school dropout who is used to being judged by others and taking care of her less-than-perfect mother. But when her mother fails to return home for several days, she goes in search of her mom, fearing the worst.

Barbara is the president of the PTA and the wife of the Ridgedale Chief of Police.

She works tirelessly to make sure that their lives at least appear as perfect as possible. When she starts noticing unusual behavior in her preschool son Cole, she knows he must have experienced something horrible that has traumatized him and she is determined to get to the bottom of it to help her son.

In her research for the newspaper, Molly discovers that there were only two murders in the last twenty years in Ridgedale. As the story unfolds, the reader discovers that this perfect town is actually full of dark secrets and cover-ups.

There are truly several mysteries to fi gure out along the way, including a missing person, a history of several female students mysteriously withdrawing from the local university, and some unanswered questions from another body that was found nearly a decade earlier that had been ruled as an accident. Is it a coincidence that this body was found in the same location that the young baby was found?

Although I enjoyed this quick read, there were moments where I felt like my head was spinning trying to keep track of all the connections between the different characters in the town. Though truthfully, I think that is part of McCreight’s style in keeping you guessing that nearly any one of them could be responsible in some way for what has happened. It also is pretty true to life in a small town like Ridgedale in which, it seems, everyone is connected to everyone else in one way or another.